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Stricter exit requirements?Tim Buckley, The Advertiser, January 26, 2012 Feeling burned by Middle Tennessee and Florida Atlantic, the Sun Belt Conference must make it much more difficult for member programs to leave the league without at least a full year’s notice, SBC commissioner Karl Benson fully believes. He’s not alone. "I would have to agree with the commissioner," UL athletic Scott Farmer said last week, on the same day MTSU and FAU made it official that they had agreed to a reduced $700,000-per-school penalty for leaving the Sun Belt on short notice in order to join Conference USA in time for the 2013 football season. The league’s fee for leaving early had been $1 million, a sum raised from $500,000 in May of last year. But the two sides came to terms on the reduced fee, mostly because MTSU and FAU were dragging out the process of saying whether they’d leave in 2013 or 2014 and other Sun Belt schools needed to proceed with football scheduling. No Sun Belt bylaw prevents what Middle and Florida Atlantic did, and that’s something both Farmer and Benson feel needs to be changed when the conference’s board of directors holds its annual May meeting. "Just as the bylaws allowed for an early departure with a $1 million penalty," Benson said, "the bylaws did not provide for a notification date that either Florida Atlantic or Middle Tennessee was required to inform us whether they were going to exercise a 2013 departure or a 2014 departure." Specifically, Benson and Farmer agree, Sun Belt bylaws should require a notification date much more specific than the "by "» or earlier" wording MTSU and FAU used. "We need to clean up the language in the bylaw, so if a school does chose to leave and leave early that school doesn’t hold the rest of the league hostage — because that’s basically what was happening," Farmer said. "The rest of the schools in the league could not finish a football schedule until they got a decision from two schools on when they were gonna depart, and that really, really put us in a bind." Not all schools currently in the conference want the early exit fee to be raised too high, figuring they might some day be the ones wanting to leave early. UL is believed to be one such program. But such fees typically are negotiated down anyway, so a higher figure might at least force a school to think twice before skipping out like Middle Tennessee and Florida Atlantic are. General consensus, but not necessarily unanimous thought, seems to be that $1 million is not nearly high enough. Such a bylaw wording change would have to pass by two-thirds majority. Benson wouldn’t comment on what specific figure he’d recommend, but did say he would "recommend that we revise our current exit policies that allow for an early departure. That is what needs to be corrected." "Most departures result in a lame-duck year, and most departures allow for fulfillment of scheduling," he said. "That doesn’t mean that schools A, B and C can’t buy their way out. "But the provision in the Sun Belt bylaws that allows for a school to leave within 12 months without notice and pay the $1 million is a policy and a bylaw that I am confident will change." By way of example, Benson cited a 1999 instance when he was commissioner of the WAC and Texas Christian notified that league it would be leaving in October — yet it stayed the entire next school year so it could fulfill scheduling obligations. In 2010, Nevada and Fresno State tried to leave the WAC early for the Mountain West. The WAC sued, a $5 million exit fee eventually was negotiated down to $900,000 and both schools stayed the extra year. More recently, outgoing Sun Belt members North Texas and Florida International could have left the SBC high and dry for 2012-13 after having decided earlier to leave for Conference USA — but they took the high road, are playing as scheduled this school year and won’t make the jump until July 1, 2013. Middle Tennessee has made it known it moved quickly to leave with Florida Atlantic in late November out of fear the Sun Belt was going to raise its exit fee to somewhere in the $5 million to $10 million range, an issue that never came to SBC vote because the two moved as quickly as they did in providing departure notification. The fact they dawdled on when exactly they’d leave, though, is what most-frustrated many who remain in the conference.
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